First-Recorded Citation of the Term "Selfie"

No - a drunk Australian student did not invent the term "selfie". I was using it at least ten years before him!

In 2013 the Oxford English Dictionary selected "selfie" as its word of the year, and defined it as "photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website." (Oxford English Dictionary) Over the years I've read with interest that "the first use of the word selfie in any paper or electronic medium appeared in an Australian internet forum on 13 September 2002" (Wikipedia).

Apparently an Australian man, by the name of Nathan Hope posted a photograph of his beaten up bottom lip (after falling over at a friend's 21st birthday party) with the comment: "Um, drunk at a mates 21st, I tripped ofer [sic] and landed lip first (with front teeth coming a very close second) on a set of steps. I had a hole about 1cm long right through my bottom lip. And sorry about the focus, it was a selfie." Here are some articles that provide the full story:

• The Telegraph (UK) - 19 November 2013
• The Mail Online (UK) - 29 April 2015
• The Guardian (UK) - 19 November 2013
• Visual Thesaurus (SAU) - 20 November 2013

Sure - people have been taking self-portraits for over a century and a half, and there's a lot of debate on this subject on the internet. For example:

• Quora (USA) - 2014-2015
• Slate - Ben Zimmer (USA) - 22 November 2013

But where's the first recorded use of the term "selfie" to describe a self-portrait? It seems that Nathan Hope wasn't the first to use it. My wife (then girlfriend) and I have been using the term "selfie" since the 1980's and 1990's, and here's the evidence.

In mid-1989 I left the land of my birth - South Africa - and moved to the UK. In September that year I flew out to Turkey and then made my way overland, across Europe and back to the UK. As I was mostly travelling alone, and didn't like asking random people to take photos of me at historic sites, I developed a technique to capture images of myself. By trial and error, I learned how to frame self-portraits with my Pentax ME-Super SLR by looking at my reflection in the curve of the lens. What you saw reflected back at you from the surface of the lens, is what went onto the film. In those days before auto-focus and smart auto-exposure, I'd follow these steps:

• Look for a good spot, with the sun on my face and a feature behind me.
• I'd fit either a 24mm lens or "fisheye" lens to the Pentax.
• I'd set the aperture to at least f8 for good depth of field.
• Facing the feature, I'd set the shutter speed, exposing for the skin on my left hand.
• I'd then find a nearby object, an arms length away, and fix the focus on that.
• With the aperture, shutter speed and focus all set, I'd turn my back to the historic site or feature.
• I would wrap the camera's neck strap around a hand and turn the camera around, with the lens facing me.
• If using my left hand, the camera would be right-side-up, as the shutter release button was under my left index finger.
• If using my right hand, I'd turn the camera upside-down, as the shutter release button would then be under my right thumb.
• I'd then frame the photograph by looking at the reflection coming off the curve of the lens.
• Smile. Eliminate as much shake as possible. Squeeze. Expose.
• Hope for the best and see if it worked when you get the film processed weeks later!

On returning to South Africa, I shared some of my images with the f/22 Camera Club in Pretoria (tel. +27 12 345 3129) where I was a member. Those in attendance were impressed by some of the self-portraits I'd taken, especially those from interesting angles. So during one of my travelogue slide shows, I shared the secrets of my technique with the club, and also used the term "selfie".

For example, here's a "selfie" I shot at the end of 1989 in Berlin, when the Wall was coming down:

The fact that the term selfie has an "-ie" suffix is sometimes cited as the tell-tale sign that it came from Australia. In Australian English, the "ie" suffix "serves as a marker of informality – providing speakers with a shared code of familiarity and solidarity according to Lexicographer Mark Gwynn, from the National Dictionary Centre (Mail Online, 2015).

My wife and I have never been to Australia and (at the time) neither of us had any family connections there. So why were we using the "-ie" suffix? Well, there is another country that also uses "-ie" a lot, and that's South Africa. In the Afrikaans language, the diminutive of a noun is created by using either the suffix "-ie", "-kie" or "-tjie". According to the Wiktionary entry, Afrikaans diminutive nouns "are derived from a base word to convey endearment, small size or small intensity."

• Take a look at this video on YouTube to see how diminutives are used in Afrikaans.
• See "A Grammar of Afrikaans" which confirms that "The diminutive is extensively used in Afrikaans. It is perhaps somewhat more common in speech than in writing, but is definitely more common in written Afrikaans than in written Dutch, for example. The way Afrikaans speakers use their diminutive ending lends Afrikaans a charm that bears comparison with the way it is used in Yiddish, for example."

As stated above, the use of diminutives is extremely common in colloquial Afrikaans, and conversation is peppered with them. Both my wife and I studied at an Afrikaans university, and my mother-in-law is an Afrikaner. At home we speak an eclectic mix of languages and so might might things like "gooi vir my 'n biertjie" ("toss me a small beer") or use term of endearment like "I love you skattie" ("I love you my little treasure"). I'm not sure whether it was my wife or me who came up with the term "selfie" as a shorter way of saying "self portrait", but it's likely to have been me during my lonely year on the road in Europe in 1989-1990.

So, how can I prove this? I certainly have dozens of self-portraits in my collection - see a small sample here - but don't have anything written down to confirm that I was using the term. Neither do I have evidence of the slide show I gave at the f/22 Camera Club, or notes from the presentation I made. Without evidence, I unfortunately have no claim.

I never really had any way of proving all of this...until recently. Over the past few years I have been slowly converting the old VHS tapes that I shot in the 90's to digital (MP4) files. I recently worked on one from Thursday, August 15, 1996. At the time my wife and I were living and working in Prague, and were on holiday in Turkey. Between 3 min 03 sec and 3 min 05 sec on the tape - as our ferry is landing at the port of Eceabat on the Bosphorus - my wife, Debra Childs, is heard instructing me to "Take a selfie! Take a selfie!" Take a look at the clip here...

I have a significant collection of Fujichrome slides from my world travels and beyond, and having mined my way through tens of thousands of them, I'm happy to say that I've actually found the selfie that my wife was so desperately encouraging me to take on that day. Take a look at the image below. At 02 min 57 sec on the video tape you'll recognise the exact background behind Debra and I in the photograph...

So there you have it! I have always said to my friends that my wife and I coined the term "selfie", but at last I've got the evidence of my wife using it a full six years before Nathan Hope did in Australia!

How do we change the history books and get the Oxford English Dictionary updated?

Cheers, MAlfaRK (a.k.a. Mark Lyndon Pautz) ©